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From Amazon
The only person who gets called Ballardesque more often than Chuck Palahniuk is, well... J.G. Ballard. So, does Portland, Oregon's "torchbearer for the nihilistic generation" deserve that kind of treatment? Yes and no. There is a resemblance between Fight Club and works such as Crash and Cocaine Nights in that both see the innocuous mundanities of everyday life as nothing more than the severely loosened cap on a seething underworld cauldron of unchecked impulse and social atrocity. Welcome to the present-day U.S. of A. As Ballard's characters get their jollies from staging automobile accidents, Palahniuk's yuppies unwind from a day at the office by organizing bloodsport rings and selling soap to fund anarchist overthrows. Let's just say that neither of these guys are going to be called in to do a Full House script rewrite any time soon.
But while the ingredients are the same, Ballard and Palahniuk bake at completely different temperatures. Unlike his British counterpart, who tends to cast his American protagonists in a chilly light, holding them close enough to dissect but far enough away to eliminate any possibility of kinship, Palahniuk isn't happy unless he's first-person front and center, completely entangled in the whole sordid mess. An intensely psychological novel that never runs the risk of becoming clinical, Fight Club is about both the dangers of loyalty and the dreaded weight of leadership, the desire to band together and the compulsion to head for the hills. In short, it's about the pride and horror of being an American, rendered in lethally swift prose. Fight Club's protagonist might occasionally become foggy about who he truly is (you'll see what I mean), but one thing is for certain: you're not likely to forget the book's author. Never mind Ballardesque. Palahniukian here we come! --Bob Michaels --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Featuring soap made from human fat, waiters at high-class restaurants who do unmentionable things to soup and an underground organization dedicated to inflicting a violent anarchy upon the land, Palahniuk's apocalyptic first novel is clearly not for the faint of heart. The unnamed (and extremely unreliable) narrator, who makes his living investigating accidents for a car company in order to assess their liability, is combating insomnia and a general sense of anomie by attending a steady series of support-group meetings for the grievously ill, at one of which (testicular cancer) he meets a young woman named Marla. She and the narrator get into a love triangle of sorts with Tyler Durden, a mysterious and gleefully destructive young man with whom the narrator starts a fight club, a secret society that offers young professionals the chance to beat one another to a bloody pulp. Mayhem ensues, beginning with the narrator's condo exploding and culminating with a terrorist attack on the world's tallest building. Writing in an ironic deadpan and including something to offend everyone, Palahniuk is a risky writer who takes chances galore, especially with a particularly bizarre plot twist he throws in late in the book. Caustic, outrageous, bleakly funny, violent and always unsettling, Palahniuk's utterly original creation will make even the most jaded reader sit up and take notice. Movie rights to Fox 2000.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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First Sentence
TYLER GETS ME a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
TYLER GETS ME a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. Read the first page
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Soap suds and more,
This review is from: Fight Club: A Novel (Paperback)
Fight Club was the first Chuck Palahniuk novel I read, and I have since become a die-hard fan of his works. I first saw the movie with my friend and fell in love with the story. She was the one who first recommended reading the novel, because according to her, the movie leaves out too many things, and you need to read the book to get the full impact of the story. She couldn't have been more right. I purchased the book and read non-stop for two days, then watched the movie again. It's truly captivating. The best thing, however, is not the story itself but the way in which Palahniuk presents the story. His writing style is one that is brilliant and unique. The characters he creates are intense, and you manage to find parts of yourself that relate the each of them, parts of yourself and your mind that you didn't even know existed. This book is amazing, as are all of Chuck Palahniuk's novels. Would also recommend the following books: Children's Corner by McCrae, Survivor, Plot Against America, and Bark of the Dogwood.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Satisfied Customer.,
This review is from: Fight Club (Paperback)
I ordered a USED copy of Palahniuk's Fight Club, it was shipped promptly, arrived in good condition. I was not disappointed. I will order from Alpha Textbooks INC. again in the future.
5.0 out of 5 stars
awesome,
By
This review is from: Fight Club (Paperback)
this is an amazing book. if you've seen the movie there won't be any surprises, but the book goes more in depth into the concepts and such so the reader can get a firmer grasp on the ideas the author is trying to convey.the story starts off with this guy who's going to these anonymous groups for people with terminal diseases, but he doesn't have a terminal disease. so right at the beginning of the book we have the main character searching out destruction as a way to solve his discontent. the cause of his discontent of course would be that he feels he doesn't belong within his own society, that his individual self has no presence when interacting with society as a whole. so the individual revolts against society, reasserting its authority over itself. and this would be the reason for fight club. what makes fight club so wonderfully appropriate as a beacon for the individual to rise up against society is that society finds the concept of fight club so abhorrent, it doesn't understand the logic. society's morality dictates that we are all special individuals that are to cherished. we are all special individuals... something of an paradox, but as we all sway to society's rhythm we can see the logic. but if we take this statement apart and apply it to our own lives, because the western world believes this to be true, generation me as an example, and yet we are all alienated and desire/ are forced to be the same. one of the mantra's in this book was 'i am not a special snow flake' or something to that effect. by denying society's morality, the individual recognizes their discontent and counters it (of course in real life the contrasting extreme is no better than what caused the trouble in the first place, but one very much deserves the other... and its great for symbolic purposes:P). the members of fight club act in a way that society does not comprehend so that the individual can gain autonomy over itself, wresting itself out of the numbing grasp of society. this would manifest itself as destructive behaviour, both towards the self and towards the other, desiring the loss of the individual in a crowd, looking beneath the superficiality we create around ourselves to present as an image, and presenting something unacceptable in its place. besides the extreme need for society and the extreme need for the individual there is also the need for balance, hence there being three components to the novel. the aggravator, the aggravatee, and something detached from both. the aggravator would be society, whose desire is to quell individuality and can be found in characters that are 'normal' like the guy's boss, or the very motivation in each of our heads and within the scope of each character's awareness to conform to the bigger picture. the individual would contrast this in it's desire to rise up out of society establishing its autonomy over itself, and this can be found in the idea of fight club and those who believe in it's teachings. the third party would be able to see the benefits and flaws in both extremes, and that would be our narrator, or even the reader, and this person sees a need for both.. or a need for neither. it was very symbolic, which i enjoyed, but if you're not the type that goes for symbolism... well it'll tap into your rebellion or something.. and it has the fighting (which is you revelling in the symbolism but denying it!). great book though. i recommend.
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